“Careful,” the old man said. “She can still hear you. Do not alarm her.”
“Just relax, Mirra,” the female voice said. “No one will hurt you here.”
Don’t, Karra said to the voices behind the fading sun.
She awoke alone. A furnal lamp, set on pilot, glowed from the top of a box to her right. Her gun rested beside it. She no longer rested near the back door but on a mat in the center of the room, covered in blankets. Most of her attention, though, focused on her throbbing body. She seemed to hurt everywhere, leg, back, arm, especially her head.
Someone had bandaged her. The sleeves of her shirt had been cut away, as had her pant leg, she noticed as she lifted the covers. She opened her shirt to look, and in addition to a wide bandage across her chest, was amazed at all the cuts and stormcloud colors crossing her body.
Enough of this. She refastened her shirt. It’s time to get back to Jem and the Homelander Front.
Yet she did not move. They would own her, the way Peeti had tried to at first. Except with the Front, there was only one way out.
Which changes nothing. She forced herself to sit up. The attempt nearly made her pass out. She dropped her head between her knees to push back dizzying waves. In a bit, she promised herself. I'll leave in a bit.
A door across the room, not the one she had fallen through earlier, opened. She raised her head and edged her hand to her gun beside the lamp. A man entered.
But the man, also watching, waited until she clutched her gun in her unsteady hand before he spoke. "Do you fear me so much?"
Yes, she thought. I do. Leahl, easy to manipulate with simple suggestions, was not this person. This person was…different. She feared the strength that seemed to surround him.
"Did we hurt you when we bandaged you?"
She gritted her teeth in anger and said nothing aloud. I was unconscious, you backside.
"Perhaps you will allow me to bring you supper."
Supper? More often people were left to die. Few had the resources to care for those outside their families and impose a debt of life on others. Debts always implied repayment, and fewer still, especially those in need, had the resources to repay a lifedebt. “Why?”
“I thought you might be hungry.”
She tried to remember her last meal and could not. A spicy odor drifted across the room. It reminded her of Suzin’s apple dessert. Tantalized, her mouth watered. She cursed Chi’ara.
“Megan,” the man said to a figure behind him. “The girl is awake, and sitting, which surprises me. But she seems not to want the supper you prepared.”
“No supper?” The woman strode past the man. “Nonsense,” she said as she knelt beside her and placed a plate on the box with the lamp. Then she noticed the gun in Karra’s lap and froze for a moment.
“You will not insult me or dishonor the Maker by refusing this meal,” the woman said, her words braver than the sound of them.
Karra glanced at the plate, identifying a soy and noodle soup dish, a few slices of apple, and a spice muffin. She wanted the meal, but she hated owing her life to strangers. One problem. By the evidence of her bandages, it was too late to avoid a lifedebt. But even more, Karra hated to be seen as vulnerable.
“Aren’t you hungry?” the woman asked, confused when Karra failed to respond.
“Thirsty, too, I imagine,” the old man said, approaching with a pitcher of water and a glass. Had he been holding them all along? Disquieted, she stared back at him.
She stroked the gun, almost polishing it in her anger at her weakness.
“You are very thirsty,” he told her as he placed a full glass nearly in her lap. “You have lost enough blood to make the strongest worry about their health. Drink the water slowly, Mirra.”
She was extremely thirsty. All of a sudden he seemed to make her aware of it. Her hand abandoned the pistol and reached for the water, alert for any threatening actions on his part. She sipped the water, her eyes never leaving the couple.
He filled her glass again and set it by her plate. “You are very hungry. It has been a long time since you’ve eaten.”
How can he know? she thought, alarmed.
“There, you’ve gone and startled her, Gradi,” the woman said.
“I know what I know,” Gradi said, frowning. “Eat, Mirra.”
One bite, she thought. But the bite led to another, and another, until all the food on her plate was gone.
When she finished, she saw the man seated in the dark space on the floor beyond her. Megan was gone.
Her hand reached for her gun.
“Do not be afraid,” he said. “I only remained to tell you that you have been badly hurt. You will mend, with rest, but when we found you we could not be sure you would live. Stay a few days.”
“I’m fine.” She had been here long enough.
“You are not!” he snapped. “For the better part of two days you have been unconscious.”
“Two days!”
He nodded. “At least stay the day.”
At least stay the day, she repeated to herself as she watched him leave.
Last winter Suzin had found a woman who had been badly beaten lying in the alley behind their apartment. Against Carlon’s protests, Su had bandaged her wounds and had helped her up the fire escape stairs. “At least stay the day,” she had said.
The woman had stayed several days, then disappeared. No one in the family ever saw her again. Karra had used every contact she knew to find that girl. But no one did. They had never even discovered her name.
She watched the man leave and curled back under her blankets. I’ll just rest for a moment. But she fell promptly to sleep.
The ragged blonde girl hangs back from the rest of the beggars. She watches the bolder children push their way through the constantly moving crowds to approach the ones who seem the richest. The richest, though, never enter this part of the city, Daddy claims.
But some of these people have money. Other beggars are getting dit coins.
“Just tug on a sleeve,” one of the other children tells her. “Hold out your hand for a few coins.”
Weary of the cold and hunger, she remembers offering to talk to Master D’ey Sol, but both her oldest brothers, Carlon and Jem, refuse her request. Carlon dislikes the Discipline Master. “The old Nevian has never done this family any good,” Carlon reminds her.
But he’s my teacher, the girl wants to protest. She cannot imagine that the priest would ever harm anyone. “He will at least give us food,” she manages to say aloud.
“Stay away from him, Karra,” Carlon says. “You know they’ll be watching him to see if any of us show up.”
“Yes,” Jem agrees. “Stay away.” His warning, awash with fear, leaves her weak and trembling.
He then bends very close and whispers in her ear. “And NEVER ACCESS the energies way he has taught you. It’s very power will destroy you.”
The use of Talent DESTROYS, she hears as if it is screamed in her ears. She stares at Jem, horrified to see something dark, like hatred, peer at her from behind his deep brown eyes.
The nightmare jerked Karra awake. It both terrified her and confused her. Something important lay hidden in the dream, but it evaded her conscious mind. Maybe, she thought, it was not something, but someone… But as she tried to reach for the essence of the dream, it vanished.
Not yet, a voice taunted. You will access your Talent when I allow it, creature of mine. But not until you learn compliance.
Karra stifled a scream. Any second she expected the hallucinations to return.
But although she waited, neither the voice nor the hallucinations accosted her.
Chapter 12
Mirra?”
Startled, Karra awoke. She brushed back a tangled curtain of hair. Sunlight streamed in from the open door. For the first time she saw him clearly, out of shadow.
Nevian!
She drew her knees up to her chest to an impotent move of defense and stared at him.
"You fell asleep again." His face crinkled pleasantly.
"I seem to be doing a lot of that." Several days had already passed, time during which she had done little except eat and sleep.
He nodded. If aware of her new mistrust, he gave no sign. "Sleep is necessary for healing."
Definitely time to go, Karra decided. She had slept long enough. Jem would be worried about her by now. Besides, to trust in the kindness of a Nevian was like offering an assassin a bare throat.
"My wife needs to change your dressings, if you please."
"I guess so." Her words were for his Homelander wife who watched hopefully from behind.
The woman approached and turned the flame of her lamp up, even though the room seemed bright enough to Karra.
The couple is a reverse of Carlon and Chi’ara, she found herself thinking. But at the thought of Chi’ara, she almost cursed aloud. She smelled the missed meal at Suzin's, the odor of chicken and noodle casserole, with real chicken and noodles made with real eggs. She remembered with longing the aroma of apple, sugar, and spices. She began to wish Chi’ara chronic indigestion.
Just as she was in the process of inventing some more interesting curses, like baldness, crabs, and the trots, the man spoke again.
"Do we continue to call you Mirra, or do you have another name you prefer?"
"Lollie," she told him, a shortened form of lolligirl, with bawdy connotations. On such short notice, though, it was the first name that came to mind.
"Lollie?" Her choice evidently failed to please him. "That is not your real name, is it?"
"No, but who cares? My last boyfriend didn't."
"I care about who you really are."
"Lollie." Lips thin, eyes hard, she stared back at him.
"Of course."
But Karra did not leave that day. While the Nevian spoke to her, she drifted back to sleep again, not waking before they had left another meal. A part of her wondered if the Nevian were somehow responsible for her frequent naps.
Each day Gradi felt the shield of suspicion she wore, a plastisteel mirror that reflected her surface self. He had hoped the kindness he and Megan tried would touch her and begin to dissolve her resistance. When he managed to peer behind it, he found a woman as bitter as the grip of winter. Even so, something about her was familiar, as if he had once known her. But no, he would have remembered such an iron-clad soul. The only one he remembered with this much resistance was a person he hoped he never encountered again—Jem Willo.
Aside from familiarity he had also seen something else, or thought he had. Since then he had been searching for it. To find it he knew he needed time. The frequent naps he “inspired” would last only for as long as her body needed rest. Soon she would want to leave. He needed to find a way to encourage her to stay.
He watched as Megan peeled away the old bandages, and like the first time, saw the young woman grit her teeth when they struck. But she would not cry out. She always held herself under rigid control.
Suddenly he felt a tiny probe of curiosity. She wanted to know more about him! Yes, someone had told her that this was a safe place. She wanted to know the truth. Pleased, he drew the curiosity toward him.
"Besides taking in transients who bleed all over your storeroom," she said. She directed her question at my silver hair, not my eyes, he noted, not since she became aware of my planet origin. "What do you do?"
"I take in transients," he replied. "And I talk. I call my work here a school," he offered. "I am a priest of the ancient Formalist Path."
"Yeah?" As quickly as her curiosity flashed, it extinguished.
Gradi wanted to sigh in frustration. This young woman feared anything she could not touch, taste, feel—or control, he realized as he brushed the surface of her thoughts. She distrusted any spiritual discipline; she even distrusted the energy that pervaded her very being. He wondered if she knew she possessed Talent, even when she used it. What he needed to know is whether she had ever used a direct blast of the energies to kill. She would then be a wild Talent, and at her age, might be unable, or unwilling, to learn how to leash her internal abilities. But he knew he would try. He always tried.
But sometimes when he started too late with a child, the child rebelled against the Discipline, as Jem had. Unfortunately, he had provided Jem with just enough training to make him dangerous. Jem was not a wild Talent. No. Jem was a twisted Talent. The only thing Gradi had been able to do when he finally released him was impose the First Rule: the Talented must never use a direct blast of the energies to kill. He had also added a trace, so that if Jem ever broke the First Rule, Gradi would know immediately. Gradi did not like to think about what he would then be forced to do.
He doubted this young woman posed the same threat as Jem. For some reason, he also doubted she was a wild Talent. Although he could probe to find his answers, this one would feel it. He would need patience, gentleness, and much time. Finally, he did sigh. She would never allow him the time, he knew.
“Done with the arm,” Megan said, her merry green eyes twinkling in a face much younger than the white of her hair. Gradi loved that face, but it saddened him that the reddish brown of her hair had begun to diminish nearly the day he met her. The year before their first meeting she had lost both her children to starvation. The tragedy caused the premature white he now saw. He always wished he had met her earlier. He would have loved having her children running through his many rooms.
“Now, Gradi,” she said with a fond pat to his arm. “It’s time for you to leave while I change the dressing on her back and leg. Ladies need privacy when they undress.”
Karra watched him turn to go, curious about his sad smile.
The old Nevian bowed before he left, a formal bow that surprised her.
Seated, all she could do was nod formally. His eyebrows lifted at her unexpected response. Chew on that one, Priest. She hid a smile of vicious amusement.
As soon as the door closed behind him, she dutifully removed her shirt, a new shirt with both sleeves intact. The pants were new too, gifts from the strange couple. Payment due. She wondered how she would accomplish repaying them for the clothes, the care, and probably for saving her life as well.
"You're good," she told Megan as she examined her arm. "Do you do this often?"
"Often enough. You lived. Not all do."
"But why? What do you hope to get in return?"
The woman laughed, the kind of a giggle a girl would make. "Why, I hope to get a live person at the end of it, of course. Don't you have something you love that rewards you more than money?"
"I guess so." Chalatta came to mind with a force so sudden she gasped. When her daughter had been an infant there had been very little reward, just a lot of hard work, and a demanding baby who grew from crying for what she wanted to a toddler who openly rebelled when she did not get her way. But now the she had a child who adored her, and Karra loved being wanted that way.
"And?"
"And what?"
"What is it that you love?"
"No one." She whispered the lie even as she recalled the vision of Chalatta bringing her here. A safe place, Leahl had implied. Is it?
"Oh, I don’t believe that. But maybe you’ve been badly hurt. I was. My children died the year before I met Gradi. I did not know losing one’s child brought physical pain. But it does, Lollie. If you ever have one, I sincerely hope you outlive it. I can have no others, you see. We are unable, him being Nevian. Gradi says our species are two different kinds of creation, so although we appear similar, we cannot mix genetically. So, instead, we take people in. Gradi says I would mother them all if I could. Most would rather I didn't, though. You, for example. We threaten you, don't we?"
Karra said nothing, because she could not answer that.
Chapter 13
Karra’s curiosity won. She knew she was well enough to return to Jem. Instead she wanted to find out more about this Nevian who did not stare at human females as if they wore nothing. Something about him intrigued h
er, as if she knew him somehow. Even more, she felt drawn to him because of a gentleness she had never known before, not even from her parents. The dominant emotion she remembered from her parents was a constant tension born of fear. This Nevian seemed to fear nothing. She imagined that even with rifles pointed at him, he would find a way to reach out to his accusers. It seemed he owned a confidence not born of physical circumstances, but of something deeper. Was it curiosity about him that she wanted satisfied, or was it the undercurrent of security she found so fascinating? Karra wished she knew.
Intending to find out more about him, she toured his building. Gradi was speaking tonight, as he did twice each moon cycle. His wife claimed his words were “most inspirational” and she always attended, so Karra had the building all to herself. No one would guide her away from what they wanted left unseen.
She began in his office.
The complete disarray surprised her. Evidently neither Gradi nor Megan knew how to keep an orderly workspace. Worse, most of his notes were handwritten, which made no sense with such a fine computer system at his disposal. Why pay for such sophisticated equipment and not use it? When she did access his computer files, she found those in a jumble as well. The priest needed a secretary, she thought with amusement.
Karra found notes for future speeches with grocery lists in the margins. She found instructions to give to various charities combined with gardening ideas.
She found notes on future classes, but no notes on anyone taking those classes. She found no notes on any past classes. Evidently, he used the shredder next to his desk more than he used his computer. In fact, he kept no computerized notes on a single person, past or present.
He did keep extensive files written in Nevian. So if he kept files on people, he wrote those notes in his own language. His past speeches and his records on individuals might be included in those. He also kept a limited library, also written in Nevian. But since she couldn’t read Nevian, she dismissed those.
Her Darkest Beauty: An Alien Invasion Series - The Second Generation Page 12
